Han-unification was the result of Asian scholars, in particular the Ideaographic Research Group [1]
I have no idea what "Aristotelian essentialism" is supposed to mean, or if you are saying that the unification was that.
> And apparently the Japanese complained bitterly over the ones that were merged.
and
> but I was told that the Unified CJK thing adopted a different "philosophy" from the rest of Unicode [...] mostly due to vocal objections from the Japanese.
I have no idea what "Aristotelian essentialism" is supposed to mean, or if you are saying that the unification was that.
> And apparently the Japanese complained bitterly over the ones that were merged.
and
> but I was told that the Unified CJK thing adopted a different "philosophy" from the rest of Unicode [...] mostly due to vocal objections from the Japanese.
Seems to contradict each other.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideographic_Research_Group